The new attack of the state to freedom of the Internet limits only the incompetence of officials

The Duma is considering several new repressive bills aimed at restricting freedom of information on the Internet. The state intends to control the market of messengers, whose users will now be required to provide their identification data, oblige providers to automatically block the so -called mirrors of sites that have already been banned in Russia, and most importantly, prohibit the means of bypassing blocking, such as VPN and Tor. Separate odious deputies, like Vitaly Milonov, also offer the final solution to the issue of free Internet due to the “exit to the Passport network”, but they are still dismissed from his initiatives even in the specialized Duma committee.

Against this background, a scandal erupted around the site blocking system created several years ago. It turned out that Roskomnadzor officials did not provide that the censorship technology used can be easily used against conscientious sites, including government, due to the substitution of IP addresses associated with domain names from the Black List. On the eve of the “Direct Line with the President V.V. Putin ”Roskomnadzor even had to send panic letters, in which, without any legal basis, it was necessary to block the IP address of“ conscientious sites ”from providers. The irony of the situation is that the system of control over the Internet, developed by Roskomnadzor, works so incorrectly that the department has to develop its own “white list” to protect against it.

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There is no reason to expect that new censorship methods will be more effective. Apparently, we are waiting for messengers and VPN, which exist in the “gray zone” of Russian law - according to the law, they will need to be prohibited, but this will be technically impossible. Small players can immediately suffer, which in Roskomnadzor will report on the work done. In the same way today, large social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, do not comply with the law on the transfer of servers with personal data of users to Russian jurisdiction, but they are not blocked. But the LinkedIn professional contact network, popular in the world, but relatively unclaimed in Russia, was blocked.

About the locks of Roskomnadzor

Alexander Litreev

Founder of the "Studio of Alexander Litreev" on the development of sites and mobile applications

- Roskomnadzor brings domain names to its register of prohibited pages: vk.com, yandex.ru and so on. IP addresses are tied to each domain name. They indicate which computer your computer will turn to the network if you enter a certain domain name to the address line. Domains are sold for a period of a year, so periodically some of them, including the blacklisted, are released. Anyone can purchase a blocked domain and tie it to any IP address. Thus, the IP address of quite conscientious resources become inaccessible to a significant part of Runet users. This problem has been known since 2014, but before it has never been discussed in wide circles. This time it all started with the fact that some kind of offended domain offended by Roskomnadzor tied him to Telegram IP addresses, which is why many users experienced difficulties with access to the messenger. In the IT community, a proceedings began. When we found out what happened, I wrote about it in my channel in the same Telegram. This prompted some Internet activists and haters of Roskomnadzor to use this vulnerability. As a result, Instagram, Facebook, Google and other sites were not available for some time. I myself have nothing to do with locks.

All that happened is the fault of exclusively Roskomnadzor, who did not provide for such a development of events. The system of automated locks of the AC “Examiner”, which is used by the majority, which most of the communication operators, was technically unemployed. Moreover, Roskomnadzor did not consult operators on how to properly block. This must not be done by DNS-soreing, as it is now, that is, not by domain names, but pointwise-according to specific IP addresses of resources. Now Roskomnadzor is either in a panic, or in hysteria, it issues strange decisions about “white lists” - “sites that do not need to be blocked, even if we ask you to block them.” This is something indescribable from a legal point of view, in any regulatory acts the concept of “banning blocking” is not at all. Recently, the head of the department, Zharov published a press release that he sees the solution to the problem of a new law, which will determine the blocking procedure: providers will have to use equipment for DPI (deep filtering technology.-A. Kh.). The problem is that such equipment costs unrealistic money. To introduce this law means killing half of the Russian providers, because it will not afford it. It will not be able to clean the register manually, removing the freed domains from there, Roskomnadzor will not be able to: this will require a huge amount of human resources.

About the ban VPN

Mikhail Lisnevsky

The head of the regional development of cybersecurity of Softline

- We will implement the VPN ban technologically, but it is unlikely to be possible in modern realities. What is VPN? In fact, this is the tunnel through which data is transmitted. The walls of this tunnel for the provider are opaque. In other words, the provider cannot know what kind of data is inside the tunnel, so it is unrealistic to filter specific traffic (say, traffic of messengers or the traffic of the largest social networks). You can only prohibit the VPN tunnels in general: this is what all companies that are serious about information security do. Such a maneuver is implemented using inter -grid screens. By analogy: you can prohibit VPN at the level of Internet services providers. But such a ban will make defenseless corporations and state structures for which VPN is a regular tool to ensure information security. To deprive the use of VPN is to make them defenseless before cybercriminals.

On control of messengers

Artem Kozlyuk

Head of the Roskomsvoboda project

- Owners of instant messengers want to oblige contracts with mobile networks operators, which will indicate the personal data of users with a binding to the mobile phone number. How it will be implemented in practice - it is not yet clear, representatives of the industry have repeatedly declared the absurdity of this initiative. Firstly, there are messengers who, in principle, do not oblige you to register through the phone. Secondly, part of the messengers position themselves as protected, which means that they will never go to the transfer of personal data of users to third parties, otherwise the meaning of their existence disappears. I believe that this bill is lobbying: it protects the interests of cellular networks operators. All over the world, mobile operators have long wanted to subjugate messengers, as they believe that they parasitize their infrastructure, select customers and give nothing in return. If the law is adopted, then operators will be able to violate the principle of “network neutrality”, that is, give priority to certain types of traffic, make the use of instant messengers with paid and so on.

If any service does not obey the requirements of the authorities, then it will be blocked. This is done in the same way as with sites: Roskomnadzor introduces technical domains and IP addresses of messengers to its register. You can try to agree with the Apple Store and Google Play so that applications are excluded from Russian stores. If the service is large, as, for example, Facebook or Telegram, then Roskomnadzor tries to solve the problem of backstage, automatic blocking is not used. But with less famous sites, the conversation is short. Even the largest network of business contacts in the world of LinkedIn, which in Russia had more than a million users, was blocked by one or two. Now a number of instant messengers are not available in Russia, including the well -known Line, Zella and Blackberry Messenger. In general, this does not interfere with their work: if the owners and users are ready to technically counteract blocking, then the services remain available. In some cases, a regular VPN will help the user, and sometimes the developer himself does everything, introducing new locking tools.